As explained later with reference to the drawings, a conventional network integrated management system concentrates part of the monitoring information collected by the monitor/control apparatuses of the networks, then notifies it to a single network host monitor apparatus by its own protocol using leased lines or dial-up lines. The network host monitor apparatus provides status information of the networks to an operator based on the notified monitoring information. When a network has to be controlled, this control is performed from the monitor/control apparatus connected to that network.
Such a conventional network integrated management system suffers from the following problems i) to iv).
i) The network host monitor apparatus only collects the monitoring information. Therefore, there is no protocol for control of networks through the monitor/control apparatuses. Accordingly, each network can only be controlled from the monitor/control apparatus of that network. This is extremely inconvenient in network management.
ii) The above network host monitor apparatus can only obtain status information of parts of the states of the networks. Therefore, it cannot acquire further detailed status information in the networks and it is difficult to realize higher quality management.
iii) The above network host monitor apparatus and monitor/control apparatuses have to manage the states of the networks as display information. In this case, the display information naturally has to match between the monitor/control apparatus side and the network host monitor apparatus side. When the monitor/control objects in a network, for example, the node apparatuses, are increased or removed, it is necessary to update the data showing the network configuration and update the above display information at both of the monitor/control apparatus and the network host monitor apparatus. Therefore, the system is remarkably inferior in terms of user friendliness and reliability.
iv) Communication in the network integrated management system is generally usually performed using leased lines or dial-up lines. Network integrated management systems, however, are becoming increasingly larger in size at the present time. The communication costs due to use of leased lines or dial-up lines is therefore remarkably increasing.